Last month, a former chairman of the National Trust wrote a column for a national newspaper suggesting that the office block had had its day. Simon Jenkins, a former editor of the Evening Standard and The Times, wondered whether office workers now needed office blocks. “When the coronavirus has passed,” he told Guardian readers, “I believe the truth will be revealed.” In other words, no.

Jenkins, it seems, will not be mourning the end of the office block. “It has to be good news,” he went on. He wrote of a decade of London non-planning which meant that hundreds of speculative offices were in the pipeline, most of it “probably useless”.

过去6个月，伦敦市中心实际在建的新办公空间数量大幅减少，这无疑会令他感到振奋，因为封锁、紧张不安的开发商和在家办公的员工都在一定程度上抑制了这些计划。The latest London office crane survey from Deloitteshowed just 2.6m sq ft began in the period between April and September – a fall of 50% on the previous six months.

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